The Catholic Church’s support for laborers extends to all industries. Farm workers tend to heads of lettuce in a field near Salinas, Calif. (Robert Galbraith / Reuters / OSV News / 2006)
By Celia K. Downes
Hawaii Catholic Herald
For many people, Labor Day offers a welcome break from work or school, and is often called the unofficial end of summer. It’s a day for barbecues, parades, family gatherings and a last hurrah before the autumn mentality sets in.
The federal holiday, which falls on Sept. 2 this year, takes on a more serious tone for millions of Americans who keep the country running — from autoworkers and farm laborers to hospital employees and teachers, and much more. It’s an acknowledgment of their contributions to society and the economy; without these workers and the labor unions to which they belong, the United States would be a mere shadow of itself.
The Catholic Church has long honored and protected the dignity and rights of all people, and this includes the right to work and be a productive part of society.
“Each worker, each human being, is created in the image and likeness of God who loves us into being and sustains us in God’s gracious love,” explained David Coleman, a professor of religious studies who retired this past May from Chaminade University of Honolulu.
“The dignity of each human being is thus not the result of constitutions, government or individual capacity, but a fundamental grace-filled participation in the life of God who is love.”
Coleman was a professor at Chaminade for 45 years, and though officially retired he still teaches a few classes and helps with the university’s undergraduate programs in Chuuk, Micronesia. He’s served on numerous diocesan commissions, including the Justice and Peace Commission and the Hawaii Catholic Conference, and is currently the diocesan director of Catholic Relief Services.
His research and teaching focus on religion and society and Catholic social thought.
“Both my teaching and involvement in the social mission of the church have provided numerous opportunities to reflect on labor as both a spiritual and material concern of justice and the dignity of the human person,” Coleman said.
According to Coleman, modern Catholic social thought began to focus on labor and the deeply human issues around it with the release in 1891 of an encyclical, or letter, by Pope Leo XIII.
Titled “Rerum Novarum,” or “On the Condition of Labor,” the encyclical “sought to provide a Christian response to the Industrial Revolution and the plight of the worker arising within the emerging liberal capitalist and Marxist economic theories,” Coleman said.
As society became more industrialized, workers increasingly were exploited, faced unsafe working conditions, lacked a liveable wage and confronted powerlessness in the face of large corporations and companies. Liberal capitalism and Marxist collectivism were dominant, and both were negligent in their attention toward workers’ rights.
Papal insights, guidance
Pope Leo XIII proposed “a new middle ground” between the belief systems, Coleman said, “arguing that neither sufficiently respected the dignity of the worker and their rights to participate in the bounty of God’s creation — a bounty that is not a commodity but a gift given freely by God so every person can flourish.”
Other popes have also used encyclicals to emphasize that all beings called forth by God need care and stewardship, not exploitation.
St. John Paul II calls for “adequate” wages for workers and their families in “Centesimus Annus” (“The Hundredth Year”) in 1991; Pope Benedict XVI writes in 2009’s “Caritas in Veritate” (“Charity in Truth”) that labor unions should also strive to help workers not in their membership; and Pope Francis, in his 2009 encyclical “Laudato Si’” (“Care for the Common Home”), discusses the value of labor as a way to protect our common home.
“Laudato Si’” expounds on the importance of labor to human beings, saying that we were in fact “created with a vocation to work. … Work is a necessity, part of the meaning of life on this earth, a path to growth, human development and personal fulfillment.”
This concept of labor also flows into the insight of work being an essential expression of human dignity rather than something that is optional, or perhaps a punishment for sin.
Coleman provided an example of this in the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ “Economic Justice for All: Pastoral Letter on Catholic Social Teaching and the U.S. Economy.” Published in 1986, the letter states: “Every economic decision and institution must be judged in light of whether it protects or undermines the dignity of the human person. … The economy should serve people, not the other way around.”
The Catholic Church in the U.S. has historically been a strong advocate for workers and the labor movement, Coleman said, “with parishes being the base for many a labor-organizing meeting as the church sought to implement a Christian vision of economy, markets and human dignity that reflected the prophets’ call for justice for the worker, widows, orphans and the poor.”
One of the clearest and boldest examples of this support is the Catholic Worker movement, founded by Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin in 1933. Catholics today might know the initiative best through Catholic Worker communities, which have been established worldwide, and the Catholic Worker newspaper, still sold for its original price of 1 cent.
Support for the dignity of workers is just one aspect of the Catholic Worker movement, which also espouses poverty, nonviolence and equality in society. These were radical concepts when the movement was founded and they continue to challenge popular social constructs today.
Three decades before Pope Francis’ encyclical, St. John Paul II composed “Laborem Exercens” (“On Human Work”), in which he details how the essential nature of labor helps us realize our role in the paschal mystery.
“The Christian finds in human work a small part of the cross of Christ and accepts it in the same spirit of redemption in which Christ accepted his cross for us,” St. John Paul II writes in the 1981 letter.
“In work, thanks to the light that penetrates us from the resurrection of Christ, we always find a glimmer of new life, of the new good, as if it were an announcement of ‘the new heavens and the new earth’ (2 Pt: 3:13, Rev 21:1) in which man and the world participate precisely through the toil that goes with work. Through toil — and never without it.”
Visit the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ website at www.usccb.org to learn more about the Catholic Church’s position on labor and workers’ rights. To learn more about the Catholic Worker movement, visit catholicworker.org.
